In high volume handling of elongated articles such as "french fries" and the like it is desirable to rapidly and economically identify those articles or french fries that have undesirable characteristics and to separate the undesirable articles from the desirable articles. However, it is very expensive and frequently uneconomical to hand inspect and remove articles as they flow on a moving belt.
One of the objects of this invention is to provide a very efficient high volume mechanism for accurately aligning the articles in a longitudinal direction in a plurality of spaced lanes so that a large volume of articles may be processed by automatic equipment.
An additional object of this invention is to provide an article alignment and conveying apparatus that is capable of being rapidly and efficiently adjusted to handle more than one size of product.
These and other objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent upon reading the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment.